Homesick
by penvision
Summary: Set during the beginning of the 2007 movie. Casey's trying to pass the time until April comes back from Central America without dealing with any of his confusing feelings. My first fic in a few years.


A/N: I haven't written anything fiction for over two years so I'm a little rusty, but hopefully this story doesn't completely suck. And hopefully I did Casey justice, because he's the perfect average guy superhero. Just something that popped into my head after the movie. This is movie verse, right before April walks off of the boat with her statue and wakes her Brooklyn superman up. 

Homesick - 3/26/07

Casey Jones was achingly homesick, sitting on his couch in his- their apartment on the edge of Brooklyn. That was the only word that he could think of to describe this numb pain that had settled deep within his chest; this lost, desolate feeling that he could not shake, even in sleep. He had felt something similar only once before, when he was at summer camp for a week as a kid and desperately missed the noise of the city, but this time it felt like this ache was slowly crushing him. This time the city completely engulfed him and he was safely stranded in his, her, their apartment, counting bricks, while everything, and the only thing, that he wanted was 2,000 miles away trekking through jungle. He had not felt at home for a month and a half and could not remember ever feeling so utterly lonely. Well, that was it, really. He had never felt lonely until he met April, had never wanted the company of another until she waltzed into his life. And that, along with these feelings, scared the hell out of him.

A month and a half ago she had left for Central America. It had been a month and a half of sleepless nights and missed phone calls and cheap takeout and cheap delivery and 3:00 AM X-Files reruns and random brawling and an itch for alcohol that he refused to scratch. The apartment felt empty during the day and suffocating at night, soulless and foreign without her drifting through its rooms. He still had not unpacked all of his boxes, in case she came to her senses upon her return and changed her mind about him moving in. He still stared at their toothbrushes resting next to each other for at least five minutes every morning. Weird. She had kept every little random trinket that he had ever given her, which, to be honest, did not add up to much, and they sat in plain view scattered about the apartment. He had never wanted to run away from anything so badly in his life, and yet if she asked him to leave he was sure that he would die right there.

Two weeks spent slowly getting used to living with each other. And then she was gone, for an unknown amount of time thanks to a Mr. Winters and his weird obsession with old statues. She traveled before, of course, almost constantly. When he lived alone he did not mind her random absences, taking advantage of them by letting the small apartment get cluttered and dirty and catching up on the TIVOed hockey games she did not want to sit through. About two a week was her limit, though he would be a complete idiot if he did not think that she only watched them at all for him. And they never fought over the phone when she called, instead she would tell him every little detail about wherever the hell she was that week and he would tease her with all of the nicknames that she hated and they would both feel a little less lonely.

But after two weeks of seeing her for hours every day he suddenly found himself lost. And homesick. And now all he did with his days was count down the hours.

8:00 PM

Casey Jones paced back and forth in front of the television, hands wringing his favorite bat, while a commercial for a vacation resort in Peru entertained itself. He stopped and glared, not appreciating the irony, then switched his glare from the television to the phone. April had said that she would call when her ship was east of Virginia, and he had been out on rounds the last time she was in a main city so the last time he had actually talked to her was… ten days ago. Casey sighed and started pacing again. Longest, most confusing ten days of his life.

9:00 PM

Casey Jones flipped idly through the newspaper, reading a few lines of an interesting story here or there. Raphael had made front page playing vigilante again and as Casey stared at the picture of him leaping over a rooftop he vaguely wondered how his brothers had not figured it out yet. He really did look like a giant metal turtle. With a bored grunt he tossed the paper onto the coffee table and grabbed a magazine. He flipped about halfway through before tossing it onto the table, too. Where did he put the box with all of his video games?

11:00 PM

Casey Jones slipped into the living room through the window and tossed his mask and bat onto the sofa, his mind restless and his muscles sore. He unceremoniously slumped onto the couch cushions and reached for the remote when a blinking light caught his eye. Someone had called. A wave of apprehension washed over him as his finger hesitated over the play button, debating whether or not he wanted to face the reality of missing her call. With a sigh he let his finger drop. "Hey Casey, it's April, you're probably out doing rounds." She paused and Casey could picture the look of mixed disappointment and annoyance crossing her face. "I was just calling to tell you that I'll be at the docks at seven tomorrow morning with the statue. Mr. Winters is very picky about punctuality, so try to be a few minutes early-" Casey glared at the blank television screen at the mention of Winters, "and I found Leo in the middle of the Amazon protecting the local villager-" beep, "oh, my calling card's out of minutes. I'll see you tomorrow, Casey, seven o'clock, don't forget. And you had better be wrapping your cuts while I'm not there. Well, I lo-" And then she was gone. April had called and said that she was coming home tomorrow morning. Casey could not help the grin the spread across his face, but it faded a second later. She had called and he had missed it.

12:00 AM

Casey Jones hit the play button for the twenty-third time and ran his hands through his hair in an attempt to dispel some of his pent up energy. He glanced at the clock and let out a confused sigh. April would be at the docks, and, hopefully, in his arms, in seven hours. Seven hours, after a month and a half, felt like seven minutes, but at the same time felt like an eternity. He could not even remember the last time he had worked for seven hours. "I'll see you tomorrow, Casey, seven o'clock, don't forget. And you had better be wrapping your cuts while I'm not there. Well, I lo-" Her voice brought him out of his thoughts and he realized that he had missed part of the message. With a desperate half-lunge toward the machine Casey hit the play button for the twenty-fourth time.

1:00 AM

Casey Jones sat his favorite bat against his nightstand and locked the window before kicking off his shoes and crawling into bed. He fumbled with the alarm clock for a few minutes, managing to somehow get it set for six o'clock, and dropped his head against the pillow, his tired muscles slowly relaxing as he drifted into a restless sleep.

The queen size bed felt vast and cold with only him in it, and he shivered in his sleep, his hand instinctively groping for another source of warmth. It found April's pillow and curled around it for a few seconds before moving to the hover just above the mattress. A second later his hand came to rest on the cool sheets and his eyes shot open, desperately searching the room as a cold fear gripped him until his mind cleared enough for him to remember. He rolled over and stared at the alarm clock as his heart slowed. 2:45 AM, he had slept for an hour and forty five minutes. Casey let his head drop back onto his pillow, staring at the ceiling and willing his body to drift back to sleep. But nothing came, no drowsiness, just sore muscles, and he was not even comfortable. With a sigh he sat up, flipped off the alarm, but grabbed it anyway, and headed for the couch. X-Files was on in five minutes.

4:30 AM

Casey Jones inspected the fuzzy green mold that had overgrown the pumpkin pie from Thanksgiving, contemplating giving the pie to Michelangelo as revenge for knocking off his high score on Pacman, before tossing it into the slowly filling garbage bag next to him. He grabbed a bottle of ketchup and vainly searched for the expiration date before adding it to the ever-expanding "does this stuff ever actually go bad?" pile near the back of the refrigerator.

5:00 AM

Casey slipped his mask on, tucked the alarm clock under his left arm, gripped his bat in his right, and headed for the window again, looking to kill time until seven, since he obviously was not going to get any sleep. He trekked across Brooklyn via rooftop until he arrived at his old apartment, only five blocks from the international loading docks April would be arriving at. He slipped in through the fire escape and tossed the alarm clock onto the coffee table near what he was pretty sure was his phone before shoving packing boxes and magazines aside until he could see the television.

6:00 AM

With being afraid of all of these new feelings and having so much energy and not sleeping well and always mouthing off and not knowing exactly what he would do when he saw April in only an hour, Casey had convinced himself that he would completely screw everything up by now. But he was actually going to do something right, he was going to be there for April. He would watch some early morning television to pass the time and then leave for the docks at 6:40 and be ten minutes early. No, he would leave at 6:35, grab a bouquet of roses, because he rarely ever bought her anything, and still be there by 6:50. Casey grinned and grabbed the remote, mask still on his head and bat in the crook of his arm. He would prove that he could be responsible and put this Mr. Winters guy in his place, too. And he would say the right things… and he would take her out to lunch… and he would bring over more boxes… and he would give Leo a punch for Raphael… and he would… hockey finals… two minutes for checking… and would… would…

6:30 AM

Casey Jones was passed out on the couch.


End file.
